Five division world champion Floyd Mayweather has finalized a deal for a joint venture with the owner of the fuboTV streaming service, FaceBank Group - and ONE Entertainment Group - to manage the boxer’s digital likeness, Virtual Mayweather.
The partnership was created to protect and exploit the brand name and likeness of Virtual Mayweather for multiple multi-media opportunities in current and future form content scenarios. Under the partnership, one of the projects that the companies intend to develop is virtual boxing matchups pitting Mayweather’s digital likeness against other boxing legends and icons.
Resembling short films, the real-time simulations will feature top-secret results based on a modelling computer that will make incremental relationships between actual performance, velocity of punches, speed of reaction, strategy and stamina.
FaceBank will work with Mayweather to research, capture and analyse photographic, filmed and mathematical representations of his face and body to develop a computer-generated ‘digital likeness’ for global and commercial applications. The company expects to announce similar agreements with other athletes in the coming weeks.
The virtual boxing matches will be exclusive to the fuboTV live TV streaming platform and pay-per-view partners to be announced.
“My team has always been the past, present and future of sports and entertainment,” said Mayweather. “Now, together with FaceBank, fuboTV and ONE Entertainment, I am continuing that trend.”
Added, fuboTV CEO David Gandler: “With FaceBank’s tech-driven IP in sports, movies and live performances, and fuboTV’s direct-to-consumer live TV streaming platform for cord-cutters, we're already making strides towards building the kind of digital entertainment company we envisioned. Our joint venture with Floyd Mayweather and ONE Entertainment makes possible a few of the greatest fights of all time that never happened, that could have never happened...until now..”